The year has started on a different note; suddenly I’m spending time with my first love. It's difficult to pin-point the exact time or event when it bugged me like millions of other Indians, but the earliest of memories comprise of uncle taking me to a
pandal in Burrabazar where a television set was placed on a high platform and hundreds were watching an India-Australia series, of balcony cricket played with a wooden plank and a ball the core of which was made from newspaper, wrapped by Mother Dairy packets neatly held together with half a dozen rubber bands, of Sushil Doshi requesting people with heart problems to switch of their radios in that big run chase against the ...(i don't remember), of the first day at nets in the cricket coaching camp and the sight of the best batsman from our locality getting bowled out 13 times, of my selections for the district under-19 team, of my college matches which gave us free passes to Eden gardens, and of a few heart-breaks in between. I used to keep wickets and open the innings (SG was my idol), but then life took over.
So this year in January when one of my friends came up with the proposal of playing for a cricket team christened 'Shekhawati XI' after the area to which we belong in Rajasthan, I just couldn't refuse. The tournament was super exclusive in the sense that it was only for the Marwari community and that too only for 'Mali-kshatriyas' within that. I was shocked to hear that 14 teams had registered for this tournament. India is well and truly cricket crazy.
We prepared for the tournament in all earnest and our performance was reasonable enough as we managed to reach the semi-finals. I had a good run with some 30's and 40's and the most important thing was that I had delivered on my role as a sheet anchor. The sound of the willow as the ball reaches the cover boundary and that quick removal of the bails on a ball that bisects the batsman into two. It was really heady stuff.
Now the setbacks. The ongoing corporate cricket tournament has been a complete disaster; we've lost two out of two. Lack of practice, team-effort are some of the probable reasons. But, for my kids it was plain and simple, "Papa you are not a good captain".
Desperately looking for redemption.
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